Crosshairs

by Harry Hunsicker

  He fell to the ground, rolled over once, and hopped up, standing in front of me in a crouch like an aged cougar ready for one last attack. He wore tennis clothes, white shorts and polo shirt, and sneakers. His face was flushed and dappled with sweat, eyes red-rimmed.

  “Not that it matters to you, but I’m sorry for your loss.” I pointed the gun, a Beretta nine-millimeter, at the center of his chest. “Just don’t take it out on Nolan. It’s not her fault.”

  “Went running to you, did she? That figures.” He stood straight up and took several deep breaths. “What are you doing here?”

  “Looking for answers, but I don’t know the questions to ask.”

  “So you admit it was your fault.” His breathing was ragged. “Y-y-you’re the one responsible for my boy’s death.”

  I started to say something but didn’t, the right words not available at the moment.

  “You’re alive. But my son is dead.”

  “The fat lady hasn’t sung yet.”

  “You’ll live. I know your type.” Rufus took a deep breath and stood up straight. “You’re a cockroach; you’ll survive anything…almost.”

  “Don’t do the threat thing, okay?” I lowered the pistol. “It’s very unbecoming on you.”

  “I keep good records, track things on a day-to-day basis.” He wiped his brow with a handkerchief. “Yesterday my portfolio was worth sixty-five million and change.”

  “Good for you.” I wondered if Nolan had signed a prenup. I didn’t ask.

  “From this day forward, every dime of it will be devoted to crushing you.” He stuck the handkerchief back in his pocket. “You’ll wish you were dead, but I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen for a good long while.”

  “Anger poisons a man’s soul.” I dropped the clip from the bottom of the pistol before yanking back the slide and ejecting a round from the chamber.

  “A philosopher you’re not.” He turned and surveyed the wreckage of his son’s room. “Who did this?”

  “If I knew I wouldn’t be here.”

  He turned back around and stared at me for a long time. “A kneecap, I’m thinking.”

  “Huh?”

  “You won’t know when, but sometime in the next few months somebody is gonna blow away one of your kneecaps.” He smiled. “That’s just a start. Now get the fuck out of here and let me grieve.”

  I dropped the pistol on the mattress but stuck the clip and the extra bullet in my pocket before heading down the stairs. Once in the overgrown backyard, I dialed Nolan’s cell. The call went straight to voice mail.

  I threaded my way through the vegetation to the back of the garage, where I figured she’d be waiting.

  The Escalade was idling two lots down in a wide space on the side of the alley. Nolan flashed the lights once and headed my way.

  The Caddy slowed. I jumped into the passenger seat and said, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  She gunned it, going too fast down the narrow lane.

  “Try not to kill us, willya?” I blew out a lungful of air and noticed her hair was messed up, tangled and in her face. “Hey, you okay?”

  She didn’t answer. Instead the mop of hair turned, and I saw my face reflected in a pair of mirrored sunglasses.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  I went for the door and my blade at the same time. The door had auto locks. The knife got tangled in my belt and love handles.

  The man in the wig gave me an elbow to the temple. I saw it coming, tried to avoid the blow. Failed. The other side of my skull connected with the tinted window. The last thing on my mind as the lights went out was why pages from a BusinessWeek article on a multinational corporation would be jammed inside a tattered copy of Maxim.

  Minutes, days, or years later, my head began to throb, cheap-tequila bad. I opened my eyes.

  The man from Federal Agent John Jordan’s photo stood in front of me. The wig was gone. He wore a pair of tinted glasses. The sunlight streaming through the live oak trees overhead sparkled on the lenses.

  I was lying on my side on a thick bed of St. Augustine grass. A house was visible behind the man, a temporary chain-link fence encircling it, windows gone, gaps where an AC unit would go. A teardown, waiting for the wrecking ball.

  I tried to move. Hands bound behind my back with something sticky, duct tape maybe. Head hurt more. A plane screamed overhead, and I realized we were still near Love Field. I had only been out for a few minutes.

  “You’re getting involved in something you shouldn’t,” the man said. “I would have hoped our first meeting in Weatherford would have made that clear.”

  I closed my eyes and willed the pain away from my skull. “W-w-where’s Nolan?”

  “Your friend is in the car.”

  “What did you do to her?” I opened my eyes.

  “A mild tranquilizer. Should wear off in an hour or so.” He coughed and clutched his chest.

  “I didn’t catch your name.” I tensed my wrists against the duct tape, felt very little movement.

  “Names are meaningless in an age of numbers.” His coughing lessened, and he smiled. “Let’s just say I’m a professional, the one they call when they need something off the books.”

  “Word I hear is that you’re a rogue.”

  The smile slid off his face. “Who told you that?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  He walked over to where I lay and knelt beside me. A faint stench of chemicals emanated from his body, not unlike the aura surrounding Mike Baxter in the hospital room.

  “I was a Ranger, too. Served in the Gulf War, and later.” His face was impassive, hard to read behind the glasses. “We have a bond. Don’t make me do things to you we will both regret.”

  I didn’t reply.

  “I spent seven weeks in an Iraqi prison in 1998.” He smiled tightly. “Would you like me to show you some stuff I learned there?”

  “The FBI,” I said. “They had a picture of you. Said you’d switched teams.”

  “But of course. That makes perfect sense.” He sat down on the grass, cross-legged. His breathing was ragged, congestion rattling in his throat and lungs. “Problems. Opportunities. Pleasure and pain. Where does the line between them lie?”

  “Huh?”

  “The enemy is in the mirror more often than not.” His face was drawn and gray except for a spiderweb of burst capillaries in his cheeks, the complexion of a hard drinker but without the booze-induced puffiness.

  “If you say so.” I twisted one wrist and felt the tape loosen a tiny bit.

  “I mean no harm. You must know this.” He leaned forward.

  “Riddle me this, Batman.” I rolled over and managed to get to my knees. “Are you the one after Anita Nazari or is there another player around?”

  He smiled for a moment before removing the glasses. One eye was solid red save for the dark dot of a pupil in the center.

  I gasped. The contractor, Collin Toogoode, must have seen him without the shades. And now both brothers were dead.

  “Are you a student of history?” The man stood up. He was wobbly on his feet.

  “I bought the Playboy fiftieth anniversary book. Does that count?” I tried for humor as my skin went cold at the implications of his most recent action, the removal of the glasses.

  “Do you realize the amount of poison Americans place on their lawns every year, the tons of pesticides that drip into the groundwater?” He stroked the dried and dying bed of St. Augustine grass.

  I wondered for a moment if I had stumbled on some new brand of ecoterrorist. But Anita Nazari wasn’t strip mining or selling SUVs. She was a doctor, fooling around with test tubes.

  “Eisenhower was right.” He replaced the glasses on his face before pulling a brown bottle of what looked like vitamins or supplements from a canvas back on the ground. The label was familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

  “Dwight was before my time,” I said.

  “Beware the military-industrial complex.” He shook a couple of cap
sules into his mouth before taking a long drink from a glass bottle of mineral water.

  “Fortunary.” I said the name of the multinational corporation that I had read on the pages hidden in the men’s magazine.

  The man in the mirrored sunglasses paused in midswallow.

  “That company is a part of this, isn’t it?”

  “Resourceful. Observant. Diligent.” The man nodded. “Everything they said about you is true. Unfortunately your very tenacity is going to be your death sentence.”

  “Let’s not get carried away, okay, Mr. Secret Agent Man?” I felt my flesh get colder even as sweat dribbled down my skin.

  “You know that name.” He pulled a knife from his pocket. “And you must die because of it.”

  My head pounded. I swiveled, looking for a way out of the backyard.

  “Oh, that’s too rich.” The man laughed. “I’m not going to kill you. If the game still had teams, we’d be on the same side.”

  “But the glasses?” I blinked sweat out of my eyes. “Y-you took them off.”

  He held the knife in front of me. It was the Spyderco that had been in my waistband.

  “It’s the end of the fourth quarter. Your time on the field is over.” He tossed the blade into the bushes behind me and walked toward the front yard.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  It took me twenty minutes to find the knife and cut the duct tape away. I peeled the last bit off my wrists and stuck the Spyderco back in my belt.

  I was drenched, the humid air in the backyard of the soon-to-be-demolished house cloying with the scent of moldy wood and long-unkempt honeysuckle vines.

  I found a garden hose underneath an overgrown holly bush. I turned on the faucet, but nothing came out.

  The Escalade was parked in the garage of the house, the windows down. The structure was hidden from the street by a row of cedar trees.

  Nolan was in the back, unconscious, clothes soaked in sweat.

  I grabbed a half-liter bottle of spring water from the floorboard of the backseat. The liquid was tepid but welcome. I drank several big gulps before splashing some on her face.

  Her eyes fluttered open. “W-w-where am I?”

  “It’s okay.” I held the bottle to her lips. “Drink a little.”

  She took a sip and gagged. I held her upright. Patted her on the back. Gave her another few ounces. She swallowed this time.

  “W-w-wha—” Her body went slack, eyes rolling back in her head, breathing deep and regular. I carried her to the front passenger seat. The keys were in the ignition. I started the Caddy and cranked the AC on high, closing the windows as I backed out of the gravel driveway.

  I didn’t recognize the street, lined on either side by towering oaks and magnolias. The road itself was bumpy, more like a country lane than a suburban avenue. Most of the houses were barely visible, half hidden behind brick walls and wrought-iron fencing laced with shrubbery.

  After a half mile or so I stopped when the narrow street T-boned into Northwest Highway, a major road bisecting this part of the city.

  I took my bearings. To the west or left was Love Field. To the east was Preston Center, where Max’s body had been found. And Nolan’s house.

  For a moment I thought about getting the VW but figured I would be better off in a car that the FBI didn’t know about yet.

  I headed toward the home Nolan and Rufus shared. I called Anita Nazari’s cell, got no answer. Left a terse message for her to call me back.

  The quickest way to Nolan’s was to take the Dallas Tollway south to Lovers Lane and head east from there.

  I was stopped at the light at Northwest Highway and the Tollway when I saw the first helicopter. It was black or dark gray and completely devoid of markings. It came from the south and stopped over the intersection, hovering. In the distance I could see another one, circling a few hundred feet above the cluster of office towers at Preston Center.

  The Escalade sat higher than most of the other cars, giving me an excellent view of the surrounding traffic. Two navy blue Crown Victorias, each with a forest of antennas on top, were idling next to each other at the stoplight on the opposite side of the Tollway, facing the Escalade.

  Nolan stirred in the seat beside me. She opened her eyes for a moment. “Ch-ch-choppers?”

  The light changed. I followed a half-dozen other vehicles onto the southbound lanes of the Tollway.

  The helicopter rotated its nose southward and skittered in the same direction.

  “What the hell…” I kept my hands tight on the wheel, trying to figure out how they knew.

  “N-n-no police, ‘kay?” Nolan opened her eyes for a moment before snoring again.

  I skipped the Lovers Lane exit and drove on to the next one south, Mockingbird. The helicopter followed, dangling lazily over the highway.

  Three other cars that had got on at Northwest Highway exited with me.

  “The cell phone.” I stopped at the light. That explained the second chopper over the office towers at Preston Center. All of the buildings had rooftop cell stations.

  As if on cue, the second black copter appeared on the southern horizon as if it were backing up its mate. No sign of the two government Fords.

  The vehicle next to me was a late model Chevy Silverado. When the light changed, I rolled down the window and tossed my phone into the pickup’s bed.

  I turned left.

  The Chevy turned left, too.

  “Crap.” I turned left again at the next street.

  The Chevy followed suit, as did the helicopters.

  We all rode in a weird multidimensional convoy until I abruptly turned right down a narrow residential street. The Chevy kept going. I exhaled loudly and rolled to a stop at the end of the block.

  “Where are we?” Nolan sat up, blinking.

  I told her quickly what had happened. She remembered nothing of the attack by the operative who had impersonated her in order to trick me.

  “Where are you going now?” She rubbed her eyes.

  “Your house.”

  She sighed melodramatically. “I have no home.”

  “The guy loaded you up with God knows what.” I turned onto University Boulevard, which dead-ends in the Southern Methodist University Campus, and headed toward Casa Rufus. “You need to rest, get it out of your system.”

  A few minutes later, I turned onto Rufus’s street. An ambulance and two University Park police department squad cars were parked in front of the house, lights flashing.

  I sped up.

  “Stop.” Nolan banged the dash.

  I kept going.

  “Goddamn you, Hank Oswald.” She gave me an elbow in the ribs. “Stop.” Her eyes filled with tears.

  I stopped a hundred yards past her house.

  We both got out and walked to the front door. When we got to the porch, the glass entrance swung open and the backside of an EMT emerged, holding one end of a gurney.

  Nolan grabbed my hand.

  The rest of the gurney emerged, a body obviously underneath, covered from head to toe. A police officer came outside and approached us.

  “Mrs. McAlister?” He called Nolan by her married name.

  “Yes.” My former partner’s voice was strong, but her skin was pasty white.

  “I’m sorry.” The officer pointed to the gurney. “Your husband had a heart attack.” He raised one eyebrow a fraction of an inch as he looked at Nolan’s hand clasped in mine. “It was pretty sudden. He didn’t suffer.”

  More police officers emerged. More EMTs. Paperwork.

  We sat in the study as various people offered official words of condolence. I kept waiting for someone to ask my name, but no one did. If this had been in another part of town and a man of less wealth and social standing had died, there would have been more inquiries as to my relation to the deceased.

  After about half an hour, the Hispanic woman who had let me in the other night arrived. She looked at me and at Nolan, swore once, and left.

  Another thirty min
utes passed, and we were alone.

  “Now what?” I said.

  Nolan shrugged but didn’t say anything.

  “Rufus have any other family you need to call?”

  “One dead brother.” She stood up. “A couple of nieces. And Max.”

  “Max is dead, too.”

  “Yep.” Her lip quivered. Eyes filled with tears again.

  “Nolan, I’m so sorry.” I put my arms around her.

  “I-I really loved him.” She sobbed on my shoulder.

  “I know.”

  “I shouldn’t have said those things about him.”

  “Shhh.” I smoothed her hair as she cried. After a few minutes she pushed herself away and wandered into the kitchen. Pots and pans clanged together. I waited another couple of minutes and then padded after her into the garishly decorated open area overlooking a wood-paneled library that had a green felt pool table in the middle. Several pots were on the Viking range.

  “You want something to eat?” she said.

  “Sure. Need some help?” I was eager to assist in her domestic efforts since they appeared to be soothing.

  “I’m making gumbo.”

  “From scratch?” I looked at my watch.

  Her eyes filled with tears again. She sat down on the floor and hugged her knees to her chest.

  I looked at the pots. They were filled with water, nothing else. I turned the gas off and sat down next to my former partner. After a few moments she got up without speaking, walked to the freezer, and pulled out two chicken pot pies.

  I stood, too, as she put them in the microwave. Four minutes later we ate. When we were finished she said, “I want to fuck somebody up.”

  “Me, too.” I took a long drink of ice water.

  “But who?”

  “Don’t know.” I put the glass in the sink. “But I bet Anita Nazari does.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Ididn’t go to Nazari’s house. I wheeled the Cadillac into the parking lot in front of an organic chain grocery store, a few doors down from the bookstore where I had stopped before meeting Anita a few days before.

  “Why are we going shopping?” Nolan said. The center was busy, people moving about, wheeling carts full of groceries to their cars.